The Stolen Sick-Baby Blog

Since Dina mentioned it in a comment I think it is time for me to bring up the story of the Stolen Sick-Baby Blog.

I do not know if it is true or not, but there is a rumour out there that you must be careful posting images of your sick baby - especially pictures of surgical recovery with lots of tubes and things - because there are people out there who will copy them and use your photos to embroider an identity as a sick kid's mother.

I have heard this many times and it seems to be a lurking anxiety on message boards. On every parenting board I have been on there has been an incident where a poster is accused of being a "troll" faking being a valid part of the group. It creates a huge panic and masses of analysis and banning and threatening before it fades away.

Recently, on our Heart Kids online message board we were warned by the board community leader not to post pictures because:

There have been several incidences of people stealing pictures off the internet and passing children off as their own. In the CHD community there was one woman who was busted last year who not only had pictures, but I think faked a carepage too? And it happens over and over again on Babycenter - people who steal pictures and create stories to go along with them. It just happened over on October '07. Most of the time when this happens, it's babies who are "special" for some reason - preemies, twins/multiples, or babies who have health issues. I imagine this is because people get more attention this way.

Now, I haven't seen this myself so I don't know whether it is an urban legend. Thing is, its very convincing. I can imagine crazy attention starved individuals taking great pleasure in garnering support for a fake ill child. I think it could involve financial requests too to take the scam into fraud.

So, if it happens its a form of identity theft and it would be very disturbing to see your kid virtually kidnapped but I unless it spills over into real life, is there anything you can do about it? Plus, there's more chance of being hit by a bus, right?

And by the way, where is the CHD (congenital heart defects) community? Does it hang out somewhere? Is there a secret handshake I haven't figured out yet?